The difference in results between Scandinavia and the rest of the EU is very interesting. A well-working educational system is clearly the best weapon against fascism.
Also, a well working social system with low corruption. But it’s a bit chicken and the egg sort of situation.
It’s really not that simple. Look at Austria, for example. It’s also a lot about culture and society itself and how it developed. We are exporting nazis ffs. Shit that gets people thrown out of parties in Germany (like Krah) is just another Tuesday in Austria. And we have a great educational system. Of course with ways to improve.
Austrian Nazis? now I’ve heard everything!
Krah wasn’t kicked out, they just didn’t want him to show up to events because of looks. Now that the election is over watch them fully embrace that treasonous, SS glorifying nazi back as their top candidate. Also I bet it will not take longer than two weeks until LePenne forgets that the AfD is more and more admiting to be fascist and welcomes them back to ID
You’re not up to date I guess. He will not be part of the Delegation. But he’s still a member of the AfD. (https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/krah-afd-europaparlament-fraktion-100.html)
You are right, I posted this before it hit the news that he was kicked out of the delegation. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if that changes again after the dust settles. He is still a party member, as you said.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Krah just forbidden by his party to go campaigning (and he did campaign anyway)? As far as I know he’s still part of the AfD.
The only weapon against fascism
Without education and access to true information, democracy is meaningless.
It really depends, there’s plenty of ways to politicize an educational system and call it well-working. I think a more crucial distinction would be to teach people to be able to discern good sources from shit sources and how they can be manipulated without realizing it, and having taught across several semesters, if a good education system is simply not viable (i.e. poorer EU countries).
EU élections are often used to show your frustrations with the current government. In Sweden and Finland the current government is right wing.
That’s why the right hate universities. Well, that and the fact they unis will call out their BS.
Indeed it is. And still our right wing populists are constantly screeching how the “general media is clearly and unfairly left-biased,” and “how the other side of the story remains untold”.
No shit, Sherlock. Nearly all journalists have college or university degrees, that’s what happens when you open your mind to the larger world.
Participation in the EU election in Sweden was at a record low - just above 50%, which is amongst the worst in Europe. IMO that’s a serious warning flag.
A well-working educational system is clearly the best weapon against fascism.
That has never stopped fascism before. Ever.
I think they assume “well working” means “is not a propaganda tool for the fascists.”
They probably don’t want to acknowledge that capturing schools, and what history and literature they are allowed to teach, is also the easiest way to create the Hitler Youth.
It also rather demonstrates that they are the best way to create the Anti-Hitler Youth.
It also rather demonstrates that they are the best way to create the Anti-Hitler Youth.
As far as I’m aware, proper antifascism is not a subject taught at European schools. Today’s antifascists had to learn it the same way the interwar antifascists learned it - from scratch.
But it’s actually far, far worse than that. Liberal societies are utterly unwilling to confront what fascism really is nor the reasons fascism grows so easily in said liberal societies, and education cirriculums, of course, follow suit. This all makes it very easy for fascism to fester pretty much out in the open.
I won’t be relying on a formal education system to even slow fascism down… never mind stop it.
What is the proper anitfascism?
Definitely not the way the GDR did it. In the west it actually was simple, besides the obvious (teaching accurate history) boiling down to essentially Schopenhauer:
The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
And it works! Germans take much pride in their individual capacity to complain about the nation.
Let go of your earthly desires and become Buddha.
That, and also that’s not how the English language works.
It stops them from growing in the first place.
Fascism is always populated by ignorant morons. Always.
Fascism is always populated by ignorant morons. Always.
And the capitalists who funds fascism? Are they ignorant morons, too?
What about the media, which goes out of it’s way to downplay fascism? Are they morons as well?
What about the police, who always protects and enables fascism - what about them?
Your understanding of fascism is dangerously naive.
So goddamn sick of fascist populists. Fuck humanity, so fucking stupid it can’t help but shit the bed and fuck everyone else right along with em
Fascism doesn’t just come and go because people wax and wane in collective stupidity, it’s a very specific set of conditions including Class Colaborationism, rising nationalism, and declining material conditions causing people to long for “the good old days” and “take care of our own, the immigrants are stealing from us so we can’t.” The Class Colaborationism bit is important, because it explains why Social Democracies are especially vulnerable to fascism, as Social Democracy is also based on Class Colaborationism, just not based on nationalism and violent suppression.
People don’t randomly become fascist out of nowhere, it’s a failure to move forward and improve conditions that is being taken advantage of by bad actors to solidify power.
Yeah, free, happy and educated people don’t suddenly wake up as fascists one day.
No, they are conditioned to it by radical fascist talk radio and little betas like Charlie Kirk
Note that conditions haven’t been getting worse in America, but there’s a campaign by the populists to make people feel like it’s worse.
The economy is better than before the pandemic, the wages have finally started beating inflation (to the point people are making more now in wages than before the pandemic). But if you’re on social media you would not think this is the case.
Conditions have been getting worse. Capitalism requires this. Wealth disparity is skyrocketing, wages fail to keep up with productivity, and American Imperialism is causing genocide.
A minor uptick as compared to a couple years ago does not mean Capitalism is no longer declining.
Except the uptick is from 1990, it’s been getting better for about 34 years now, with setbacks in the dotcom crash, financial crisis and the pandemic.
There haven’t been better wages at any point in US history as we beat the uptick of the 1970s some time ago
Wages have been stagnating with respect to productivity, disparity is rising, home ownership is becoming more impossible for the average person, and the bulk of this decline is exported to the Global South which we brutally exploit for cheaper goods.
Home ownership rate has been steady for decades
The wages have been going up, just not exactly as fast productivity for several reasons:
That certainly doesn’t look steady, lol. Large investment firms and banks are buying up a large number of single family housing, making it unaffordable.
Wages do go up, yes, with respect to inflation. They get nowhere close to productivity increases, as exploitation rises.
Your post describes exactly the state I’m in. Fuck all these greedy fucks, fuck the dumb shits that vote them, fuck the conservatives enabling these Nazi fucks.
So goddamn sick of fascist populists
They’re the only ones allowed to do any populism. Ratchet keeps tightening, because centrists refuse to do anything nice for people and leftists who obtain the power to do so get labeled “tankie” and run out of office.
So of course, the only people allowed to say anything with a baseline public appeal are going to win a fucking popularity contest
“Tankie” “Socialist” “Communist” the same things thrown at any politicians left of center.
And a few right-of-center, when you look at how DLC Dems like Biden and Clinton got smeared.
Lmfao true
Socialist and Communist, sure. But what politicians have been called tankies? I thought tankies were a specific type of communist.
Yeah tankies are just authoritarian apologists specifically for Stalin and Mao types
I’ve seen like 20 different interpretations of “tankie” on lemmy since moving over here from reddit last year, never heard it before that and I’m a pretty political person.
Tankies comes from the word tank obv. More specifically it comes from the tanks the soviets and China used to suppress popular uprisings. People who support these regimes and these actions or try to minimize their terror are tankies.
Tankie is definitely a newer term that hasn’t hit the mainstream zeitgeist, I already see it thrown around on lemmy like how conservatives call everything “woke”, just a matter of time imo.
To clarify, the other two are usually right wing smears, tankie appears to be a left wing smear to those further left. I know the idea behind it is fake leftists who are actually just Authoritarions but… Still lol that’s how it goes with labels a lot of the time, especially the more niche it is
Tankie has been a pretty common phrase at least since I was in college. I thought they were the folks who carried water for authoritians like Mao and Stalin. It’s more specific than ‘woke’ or even ‘liberal’, in my experience it’s more akin to calling someone maga or antivax; it confers specific positions. I’ve had friends who proudly identified with the term. Unless it’s changed in meaning recently and I didn’t get the memo.
I see it thrown around on lemmy a LOT, just like how woke gets thrown around by the right, I’m not saying it doesn’t have an actual “true” meaning, just that (like most labels as I mentioned and particularly those that are more specific/niche initially) it eventually gets bastardized and thrown around with the original specific meaning lost.
That’s because there are a LOT of tankies on lemmy, specifically lemmy.ml. In many threads anything slightly critical of Russia or China will get deleted and the users banned. It may have other meanings but that’s what it means here: people carrying water for authoritarian regimes while LARPing as leftists.
We, all of us, from all the places, need to get together and start our own county. I’d bring the liquor, though our friends from Germany may legitimately throw me out a window so I’ll leave that to them.
In all seriousness, this is a situation where the minority are the loudest. Everywhere. In the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe and all the States within, we all want a better life. Do what those of us in the U.S. haven’t been able to do and organize if you haven’t. Despite the dumbasses over here flinging insults and threats, many of us are also hoping for the best across the old pond.
This situation with rising fascism is a world problem. It’d be awesome if we could, as a larger community, come together in stalwart support against something, and not just in support of each other.
Whatever you do just know we’re fighting over here in the U.S. too. Many of us are so sick of being robbed to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Anyway, this turned into a rant. I apologize.
With liquor I think you’d be fine. It’s beer that I have found Germans to be picky about. They will find a window to throw you out of if you hand them a Bud Light
Bud Light
AKA Pisswasser.
That is so not true! My German office mate from way back would drink ANY beer. And he was super fun. As a matter of fact, one time he brought Bud Light to a party I threw. He had issues with green peppers, though. Used to say, “Did you know that green peppers are just unripened red peppers?” I don’t think that’s a German thing. I think it was a him thing.
This could work. We could maybe take over Andorra or Monaco. They wouldn’t mind because we will seduce them by being either A) shopaholics in Andorra or B) gambling addicts in Monaco. It could be like this big European Vacation that never ends (eat your hearts out, Griswalds).
You’re aware that Monaco is a full-blown monarchy, are you. Yes there’s a parliament but every law needs the signature of the Prince, who is also sole head of the executive. Also they already have like 80% foreign population in the city.
San Marino would be the sane choice. Sole country ever to first elect fascists (to avoid getting invaded by Mussolini), then elect MLs, and then get rid of them again in the next elections. (Had no chance to get rid of the fascists like that they went AWOL after Mussolini’s death). Oldest constitutional republic in the world. Arguably the oldest democracy in the world: Modern suffrage was introduced in 1906 by the Arengo, a meeting of all household heads, which had had constitutional primacy since the middle ages it simply never got around giving the ruling oligarch council the boot. That council was first introduced in 1243 because the Arengo became unwieldy, then centralised power, then forgot who gave it power. I mean after 650 years that’s not necessarily surprising.
I said take it over, not obey the monarchy. The comment I’m replying to suggests creating our own country that is free of fascism. I proposed these two places because they are small and easy to take over peacefully by means of shopping and gambling. Ever hear of passive territorial expansion? That was my idea. You don’t seem to indicate another place for us to go to that would be better, geographically speaking. Maybe an island? Maybe Ibiza? That would be cool. I wonder if you were a boring child. No imagination. I also wonder if you didn’t understand my comment. I was like suggesting territorial takeover. Last time I looked, pretty much the entire European continent is occupied. Forming a new nation within Europe involves taking over a place. I picked a couple of small, easy to take over places with shopping, drinking and or gambling. And all of this is just silly, anyway. Reality must strike. This lovely plan ain’t happening. The future is quite bleak.
If you want to take over Monaco by force you’ll have to deal with France. Essentially, because history, France tolerates a part of itself as a privately-owned municipality with a symbolic UN seat of its own. Similar things apply to Andorra though there it’s both France and Spain, also they’re more democratic but you’d still have a tough time with all that Catholicism there. Ibiza is part of Catalonia, ask the Catalans overall how easy it is to gain independence from Spain. Liechtenstein is also out, they actually gave their prince absolute power in a referendum. Hopeless case. By force, you’d soon discover that the mountains say “Grüezi”. Vatican state, forget it.
There’s a reason I mentioned San Marino.
OK, so we’ll all go to San Marino. I was basically throwing out some ideas. It’s a brainstorm, not a contest. San Marino is kind of dear to my heart, anyway, because of reasons you mentioned, which I know well. Also: we need to do it now, because later we’ll all be starved to death in concentration camps.
Also, I did not mention force. I very much expressed my desire to take anything over passively. Andorra, shopping. Monaco, gambling. No military. Just sphere of influence influencing and boom, over time, we got them taken over gradually and peacefully.
Can’t we take over a section of Asia and then pretend Europe ends all the way over there? I feel like people do that all the time. Hell, Australia is in Eurovision.
I am 100% on board with this. I mean, Israel even gets to be on Eurovision, or anybody that wants to join Eurovision. Eurovision proves that we continentals are really flexible when it comes to the Eurovision. I’m just on board with the original comment about bringing the liquor and making our own country. I’m just so wondering where can we go? I want to be on board. Should we create a mailing list? I want to be on my own and happy, drinking with my fellow left-wing Europeans who are ready and willing to just be free and happy and not worry about what we have to say in public about people. Like, for example, I’m from Spain. Vox is mentally retarded and nostalgic for Franco and people like them here. What the hell? Fucking Spain has been free from Franco for like over 40 years, and I have to mingle with stupid assholes that are nostalgic for him? No thank you. I’d much prefer live in another country. That I made myself with people who are not nostalgic for fascism. You’d think people might learn some shit from history or whatever the fuck. They don’t seem to. Some of them get all nostalgic for Franco. Fuck my life.
I had it out with a friend of mine who has gone full fascist, spews all the fascist talk show rhetoric, refuses to back any of his claims. A traitor in my opinion, and he is no longer welcome in my life in any way.
So goddamn sick of communist populists disguised as middle ground socialists. Goes both ways.
Where exactly in Europe are communist winning elections?
Austria, in communal politics. Figures people like things such as social housing and respect it when parliamentarians donate excess salary to worker’s charity (in particular, everything that’s above the average wage of a skilled worker).
But I don’t think .ml denizens would ever get there. It would require, you know, touching cobblestone.
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🌈 Awww how can one not love this communist lemmy 🌈
guess people want to live in shit
I don’t. Let them live in shit but leave me out of it.
Welcome to democracy.
No, people want the people they dont like to live in shit. And dont care if that means they have to live in shit too.
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Their argument being is that as long as others have it worse, its a sacrifice they are willing to make.
I was a pessimist, therefore the results have actually come out pretty good to me. Far right didn’t win Belgium, and Left party gained a lot of seats in Finland while right wing parties lost seats. Yeah Germany (eyes them suspiciously) and France turned out very right, but a lot of the other countries stayed about ideologically the same or gained left leaning seats.
Overall it seems it’s balanced enough to keep going with the corporate accountability / public convenience stuff we’ve been seeing here in the EU, especially related to tech.
i don’t remember a time France wasn’t reactionary (in my lifetime obviously). they were in the islamophobia business way before it was cool everywhere else.
France has been uncomfortably xenophobic for as long as I can remember. It’s never really been addressed.
As I’ve previously elaborated on in a comment in reply to a similar statement - this has less to do with being anti-islam and more to do with being anti-religion. The French have had a long history with organized religion.
Though Islam has certainly become the primary target over the last 20 years.
Gee willikers, I wonder why?
Did something happen there?
Why do they have a fucking bomb proof wall around the Eiffel Tower?
I guess we’ll never know
oh i forgot if you get attacked it makes bigotry ok.
The bigotry is not in “there are evil Muslims…”, the bigotry is in following it up with “… hence Muslims are evil”.
Whilst it’s still racism to think “this minority ethnicity are good people” (because it’s still generalising by etnicity and prejudice) like some neolibs cosplaying as lefties do, that doesn’t make the “some people who did bad deeds are from a specific ethnicity hence the whole ethnicity is bad” thinking of the far-right (who cosplay as facing of against those neolibs in identitarian wars) any less racist prejudice.
Weren’t there some Charlie Hebdo happenings regarding some drawings? Can’t seem to understand why would they have something against some particular group
It’s quite sad that I’m glad the Vlaams Belang is only the second largest party in Flanders and the N-VA beat them with a few percentage points.
At this point, after seeing the reaction of the German political mainstream to the Zionist Genocide - of unwavering support very overtly because of the ethnicity of those doing the deeds - it should be no surprise at all that, just like the “judging and acting towards others first and foremost based on their ethnicity” taken to the extreme level of supporting Genocide if committed by the “good” ethnicity (in other words, extreme racism), other elements of hard Fascist thinking are alive and well in Germany - the moral distance from the mainstream endorsing extreme violence and child murder along ethnic lines if committed by people of a “good” ethnicity and traditional fascism is merelly the addition of “we’re a good ethnicity too”, since the moral “hard work” of justifying evil acts using the “superiority” of specific ethnicities over others is already done by the first part.
If the foundations of Fascism were simply given a new coat of paint and a new list of “good” etnicities, and then kept being used in Mainstream German politics, it’s hardly surprising that the overt Fascists quickly rose back up as soon as a large enough fraction of the locals was convince that they themselves were not being treated as a “good” ethnicity.
It’s sad, but predictable. Here’s to hoping for strong antifascist resistance on the ground as the EU itself teeters down the fascist pipeline.
Antifa will do absolutely nothing. Either these countries start taxing the rich and providing basic needs for their population or the right will rise.
That wouldn’t be enough, sadly. Anti-immigrant rhetoric is already supremely high, literal Nazism is on the rise.
Because the lower class cannot afford housing and food anymore. Most of us are likely not in the same situation as those people. We can still get by but those people are stating to go in the red. They just want to work 9-5 and afford their basic needs. Which they now cannot do anymore. And they need something to blame. Government abusing housing as an investment tool? Quick, blame immigrants for the housing shortage. etc.
Luckily Fascismo inc always offers a convenient black sheep.
Not only the EU. Bigotry, fascism and in general all types of extremism ( on both left and right ) are on the rise on the world stage. Its very sad but very predictable…
Genuine question, where are the extreme left rising? I haven’t seen any but that might be the algorithms/my news sources talking.
Maybe referring to china’s treatment of minorities? Though usually when people say “extreme left” they are referring to scary groups like public transit advocates.
Where is the extreme left rising? Asking for a friend who needs extrication
Well, i include extreme left because a centre left barely exists anymore on the political field. They are by far the minority, but they exists and they are absorbing the central left
It’s a good thing that the left seems to be rising in the Global South, but fascism in the Global North is scary, yed.
What happened?
Far right parties gaining significant popularity especially in France and Germany. It’s not great for the neo-liberal centre who created and perpetuated the economic downturn we’re all in and indicates a failure of the left to present a coherent alternative. There’s a lot to unpack about it. France has already dissolved their parliament and triggered an election because of these results.
Netherlands also going great. At least the xenophobes hate Europe so much they don’t bother showing up for European elections to simply say they want less foreigners.
Netherlands actually didn’t change much. PVV got +5, but FvD (a worse PVV) lost 4. And the VVD (where Wilders came from originally) also lost 1, so it kinda cancels out. Same goes for the left parties which went from 9 to 8, but that seat went to a progressive center party.
Overall very little has shifted here. And it seems at the European level the same coalition will continue too.
But I still haven’t seen a definitive explanation of why so many voters are switching to far right parties, and how exactly they can be won back*. Because the far right parties sure aren’t going to solve their problems (although they do name them), and the center assume they just need to do more of the same but better, and that hasn’t and won’t work either.
It makes me wonder whether a) the whole system of parliamentary democracy has reached its limit and cannot logistically please its voters any more than now, or whether b) voters just have too high expectations/are too selfish.
*I imagine that some voters that have been sucked too deep down the propaganda hole, like those of Trump or Orbán, cannot be won back.
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That’s part of it another is that the right offers some easy answers to some very complex questions. They aren’t the right answers but they’re easier to wrap your head around. As prosperity drops, the time, effort and resources the average person can commit to understanding the complex problems facing their country also drop. This means the easy answers take root easier, and spread further and faster because the less informed are less resilient to them.
We lefties have some easy answers and they feel quite right, too. Eat the rich. But I guess it’s not that famous in the less educated social stratum - “What if I am one of the rich, after I won the lottery?”
I think for many people who feel desperate, everything starts to look like a zero-sum game.
This is a good observation
It often happens when a society’s prosperity decays
It will be interesting to see whether the far right rises in a country like Denmark, which afaik still has the definition of a well functioning social safety net.
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Results of bad management of 2015 immigration crisis, and populist manipulation during the COVID lockdown powered by russian propaganda and American talking points.
In short: situation crazy, people mad, current governments no handle good, people more mad, bad people take advantage
Does anyone remember before the 2015 crisis? That could plausably have been the trigger, at least in Europe. I don’t even know if the rise of social media needs to be roped in to this.
In my country before 2015 the extremists were using just fringe local talking points like the Hungarian/rroma minority and accusing everyone of corruption.
The simple reason is that a lot of people feel that the status quo just isn’t working for them and hasn’t been for a number of years. So they’ve ended up gradually voting for more and more extremes as the years have gone by, to express their distaste.
Hopefully these results are a wake-up call for EU nations, so they can try and get these voters back to the more moderate parties. I suspect not though.
What happened the last time right wing populism swept across Europe?
Nothing bad I hope.
Here’s my hot take: people aren’t switching to far right parties all that much. In a moderately healthy democracy, up to 30% of voters are often protest voters. They are unsatisfied with the current state of affairs and vote for whoever promises the largest upset of the status quo that they could see as potentially benefitting them.
Often the media then likes to massively overinflate their popularity, artificially enhancing their electoral success. But it’s also often short-lived. If you look at Dutch elections, you’ll find that a group of voters went for LPF, then PVV, then FvD and then PVV again. Each time it’s broadly talked about as the “rise of X party” but almost every time nothing truly materializes.
In the US you see a hardcore group of approx. 30% of voters vote for Trump religiously. Then there’s a smaller group of moderate Republicans that dislike the Democrats enough to end up voting for Trump too. They don’t like Trump but he’s “ok enough, and better than Obama/Clinton/Biden/Sanders etc…”.
In France, Le Pen got around 30% of the vote. She didn’t perform dissimilarly to the last presidential election results, it was more noticeable that the other parties got much smaller than they were. But whether or not Le Pen can actually take the crown remains to be seen.
This is an interesting observation
I’ve seen one take that (maybe over-) simplifies to that there’s a wave of anti-establishmentalism, and while the best party to embody that under FPTP (e.g. UK, USA) is the other big party, many European parliamentary systems have proportional voting systems that allow smaller alternative parties. And the alt right sells a load of coherent, anti-establishmentalist talking points.
Dutch examples: PVV? The problem is Islamic immigrants. FvD? The problem is the Deep StateTM!
And although a lot of problems that we are experiencing (skyrocketing housing prices & cost of living, worsening labour conditions, millennials and gen Z/Alpha being worse off than their parents) are the result of the right, the left does not have a thing to sell as easily as the alt right has been able to.
I also saw the turnout polls for the Dutch vote. It was interesting to see that the portion of people who voted progressive in the last national elections and didn’t show up for the EU elections is smaller than the portion that voted fascist/populist.
Eh, I wouldn’t say its a failure of “the left.” The problem is that American style neoliberalism has become the only game in town and any minor deviation is seen as dangerous extremism. Its easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
Neo classical economics is simply “economics” or even worse “just basic economics” now. Every major media outlet going has been captured or compromised. Social media is bought and paid for by the same interests too. I mean, there’s some pockets of resistance here and there but the ultra wealthy control all the narratives.
To me, blaming “the left” for that and calling their resistancea failure is just bizarre. Its not like the narrative has changed or is remotely hard to comprehend. Its just that people like being told what they want to hear; that they were right all along.
They clearly prefer to be told its all those damn foreigners faults and that looking up is a waste of time.
I totally agree that neoliberal economics are essentially what we understand to be economics now. To be clear, I’m not blaming the left, I think it’s a case of they have a more difficult message to convey. To explain the problems that neoliberal economics has and to propose a solution to them is a really hard task compared with “it’s the foreigners at fault”. It’s a much clearer, more concise and seemingly solvable problem compared with “we need to overhaul the global economy”.
Sadly, I think you hit the nail right on the head there. People don’t want complicated answers to complicated questions. As you eluded to, blaming the out-group has worked since groups existed.
Through my own fault, I think I read too deeply into the word failure lol.
American style neoliberalism has become the only game in town and any minor deviation is seen as dangerous extremism. Its easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
I’m just gonna leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism
Its easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
Damn… it’s wild how true this is
If you like that, I can’t recommend “capitalist realism: is there no alternative?” enough. It where I stole it from, without a hint of shame.
Yes, yes… On est dans la merde !
It’s not great for the neo-liberal centre
Neoliberals love fascism… why wouldn’t this be great for them?
It’s not great for the neo-liberal centre who created and perpetuated the economic downturn we’re all in and indicates a failure of the left to present a coherent alternative
Without intending to disagree with this statement, how is voting far-right a better proposition regarding the economy?
So I didn’t make a statement about that. I’m making a statement about what these results might tell us, admittedly in a very simplistic way.
but what “coherent alternative” are the far right parties presenting? I felt that was the part of your sentence that implied some logic in voting far right
I said in another comment but basically the left have a tougher message to sell than the right. The right says that the system works but it’s the foreigners/benefit thieves/refugees stealing your money/house/jobs. That is inherently quite easy to understand without much thought or critical thinking. The left on the other hand have to tell you all about Thatcher, Reagan and neoliberalism before we even get to the point of solutions which are usually incredibly radical like changing the fundamental economic model we’ve all been operating under since the 80s. Inherent in that is a fear that the left’s solutions will take assets and wealth away from people. While the right promises that your assets, wealth and property rights are sacred and that it’s the “other” that will have their assets, wealth and rights taken away. Again, very easy-to-understand messaging for the right versus the left.
I don’t know yet but I saw “Polexit” on the Polish ballot and didn’t know if I should laugh or fucking cry
Oh it would not be Polexit. There are way better names available than that. Polout, for example.
Poles out for Harambe
Poleave
Polaway
Exit Poles.
That one. That’s the one.
Agreed, polished to perfection.
Polend
That would require more creativity than the people behind “polexit” have
Polaaaand it’s gone.
The slogan could be:
Now, the only legal contraceptive.
Love how people look at GB, see their much bigger economy, see the results of Brexit and be like: Bro, I think we would do better.
Hey maybe we can have a clusterfuck of our very own!
You get a clusterfuck!
You get a clusterfuck!
EVERYONE GETS A CLUSTERFUCK!!!
Democracy
Can someone translate this meme into FreedomBurger™ units?
EU is having a moment because their Trumper types gained a lot of seats. They can’t pretend it’s just an American problem anymore.
Thanks for dumbing it down for us colonials.
I’m actually hopeful that America had a brush with death and may shy away from that noise this time. We’ve got about 30% of the population still holding that loaded gun to our heads, but I think the rest of us understand what happens if we let them pull the trigger. Time will tell.
I hope the rest of us understand that Treason Flag Alito and Corrupt Clarence are on a team considering whether or not to hand the president a Long Knife.
We never did
For the Americans: it’s still not nearly as bad as in the US, but we may be slowly getting there.
Is yours, at least, not as obviously stupid and obviously bad?
Like are they at least able to sound reasonably intelligent? Because that’s what gets me about ours. Fuckin Trump basically has a giant red arrow pointing from space that says “This fucker is evil and stupid” but people worship him anyway?
It goes from “this is a critical problem” to “this is a critical problem and extremely embarrassing too.”
For real. The Nazis at least had matching uniforms. Our fascists can’t even buy the same brand of khakis and white polos. Talk about history repeating as a farce…
Just wait until they find out who made them look like that:
Don’t forget about Chanel!
Haha, what?
We literally predicted Trump before you voted for him, because of the right-wing populism that caused Brexit.
Wow! The prescient power to detect… checks notes
A pendulum swinging back!
No wonder you guys conquered the world.
Trump is just Berlusconi 2.0
Happy for you, that you can feel Superior again.
Nothing about “rising fascism is not unique to the US” has any relation to any perceived superiority.
We get it though, you have some sort of inferiority complex but you don’t gotta project onto the entire fuckin country
The social contract is null and void if it means a European ever has to see a Muslim person on the street.
Part of the reason the right is doing so well is this sort of hyperbole from the left, we need to work on convincing people rather than drive them further into the arms of the right
We didn’t get to see the rest of Europe in “children of men”, but I am guessing that is what’s coming
BRITAIN STANDS FREE
Immigrants being processed out
Damn pretty accurate
Hey, Finland got pretty good results.
Denmark as well, I guess I know which direction I am fleeing towards, when fascism resurges here in Germany.
Ah, the Danish social democrats are pretty much in line with the AFD…
See I used to agree with this but I changed my mind when they banned Quran burnings. I think they just want to conserve the status quo while expending as little effort as possible. While almost all the time that comes down to fucking over minorites, I don’t think their aim is to willfully harm minorites as much as possible as it is with AFD. What difference might that make is up to you.
They basically took a look at Sweden and said “we’re not going to be that stupid”, then became maybe a bit overzealous, which is understandable because Denmark’s worst nightmare is to be in any way like Sweden. Things like furnishing social housing policies to nip ghettoisation in the bud, they went to almost Singaporean degrees there.
They’ve also been on the market liberal side, that is, Denmark is pretty much hire+fire with a great social net, not like many other European socdem systems “make it exceedingly hard to fire people, if workers still manage to be out of a job then beat them with random low-wage work until they relent”. Odd one out in many regards but policies being uncommon doesn’t make them not socdem. Other things to admire them for is their lack of NIMBY problems, their solution is simple: Give a fuck about people’s backyards and if their backyard is in the way, be understanding, apologetic, and generous when it comes to compensation, and transparent along the way. Transparent as in “We’re planning something in 15 years, have five different alternatives, two of which would affect your property, you might want to participate in the process”. Compare that with the German process which is a) make a plan, b) decide on that plan, c) inform people about the plan, d) get sued into oblivion by everyone, e) start over.
Don’t get me started on their wild boar policy, though. Danish hot-dogs are very fine just make sure to not have Danish sausages in them, no, cooked meat is not supposed to be red.
Same-ish for NL. GL/PvdA continues to be the biggest, FvD is gone, all the Christians and VVD are down a seat each, VOLT got a seat and D66 is up a seat.
Unfortunately PVV grew by six seats tho, sooo…
In Austria seeing FPÖ winning is like a slap into the face.
Does the f stand for what I think it does?
what you think it stand for?
Nevermind I see ot stamds for Freiheit
more like when we still believe a burgeois state will put good politicians in power.
Ahh lemmy.ml, never change.
Ahhh America, you won’t ever change.
America will change, it’s a declining Imperialist state and wealth disparity is skyrocketing.
I’ll give you that. I meant change in a positive light, but that’s hardly ever the case these days.
I meant a positive light too, actually. Eventually there will be a point where the bread runs low and the circuses go empty, and the Empire will go the way of Rome. It’s unlikely it will go the way of Britain.
Maybe we view ‘positive’ in different ways lmao. I wouldn’t necessarily consider riots and violent uprising (what happens when the bread runs out and the circus is empty) positive. Their outcomes though? Those can be.
Yes, I am referring to the outcomes, so we can put this nightmare behind us.
Don’t be ridiculous! America has been changing quite a lot over the last decade, decidedly for the worse.
Perhaps instead of mocking America, you guys should’ve spent more time making sure politicians like American conservatives didn’t get elected
American conservatives can’t be voted out by voting extra hard, each vote is a vote and there are limits on canvassing and trying to bring over conservatives. America is declining, there is constant fearmingering about immigrants, and people long for “the good old days” while very little progressive movement happens. These conditions are ripe for fascism to take hold, horrifyingly enough.
Even if that’s all true, we owe it to our forebears to still try. And I don’t mean literal ancestors, but the American left throughout history. They fought against slavery, for equal civil rights, for the right to vote, and for the dignity to be seen as a full person. Workers rights advocates fought to give us safer working conditions and better work life balance. And all of these people were beaten and some even killed in the process.
Things don’t look great right now, but I don’t know if things have ever looked good in the US. It’s always been pretty terrible in some regard if you weren’t a rich white straight man.
Maybe the struggle will be futile in the end. But I don’t want to give up, because the people before us didn’t give up, and honestly faced harder odds.
They dont fight any more. They’ve been conditioned to think that violence is barbaric and we just need to meet Nazis in the “marketplace” and “win them over with better ideas”.
I’m did my part! o7
The rest of America enjoys the fascism.
agreed. its nice here.
but also some variety can’t hurt either.
It’s “win stupid prizes,” still, right?
Idk it’s just a scam prices like big chocolate bars with two or three actual bars inside, and big stuffed animals filled with sawdust
Austria could have gone worse, despite the FPÖ up. In Germany you have this kind of cordon sanitaire, the other parties have an agreement of sorts to never cooperate with the AfD, the CDU/CSU has been a bit flimsy on that though.
Meanwhile in Austria, the FPÖ has been around forever and used to represent some liberal politics way back when so they didn’t have that cordon sanitaire, including coalition governments between the ÖVP (the equivalent of the CDU/CSU but imbroiled somehow in more political turmoil in recent years) and FPÖ on numerous occasions. And what happened in this election is that basically three seats went from the ÖVP straight to the FPÖ.
Basically Austrian representation in the EU probably got marginally worse for all it matters, but in turn the CDU/CSU saw that any cooperation with the AfD would just lead to voters of theirs just going to the AfD in the long run, strengthening the case for a cordon sanitaire.
At least I hope that’s how they’ll interpret it. The other Austrian shift was one from the Greens to the heavily pro-EU NEOS, as much as I’ll disagree on some of their domestic policies when it comes to their EU politics they’re a bit more palatable.
Germany is being interpreted as a disaster, but the only hard right party is the AfD and they’re up around 5% it looks like… and there are 13 other parties about to represent Germany in the EU parliament. France is looking terrible though, at least the RN has at least pretended to cut off ties to the AfD. And the equivalent of the CDU/CSU in France is near death, so it’s not like voters in the middle had anywhere to go other than Macron or RN.
Nevertheless, 16% for a Nazi party is more than 16% too much.
I think germany could have gone worse, and people are quick to see that the AfD has the second most votes and cry disaster, but reality is that left wing votes are just split between more parties. Overall “cdu and further right” seems to bd about evenly split with “left of cdu”.
But still, compared to both the previous EU election and the most recent national election, it got quite a bit worse. CDU and AfD combined were at 36% in the last national election, they’re up by about 5% each, and that while the CDU has been getting closer to the AfDs position in recent years.
France is collapsing right before our eyes. Give it until year-end to turn into a totalitarian country.
France you’d better get this right, or else you’re in for years of ‘La Peine’
Not sure that’s be worse than the years of liberalism we’ve been dealing with for decades.
you dropped this /S
No.
There’s nothing RN could do that’s be different from all the shit liberals have done to our country.
Healthcare ruined: check.
Education ruined: you bet.
Fascist police: yup.
Smaller and smaller social nets: been there done that.It’ll be more of the same, except without the pretense
so you agree RN would do the same but not even pretending to care and that’s better?
I didn’t say RN would do better. I said they would be the same.
When someone fucks my ass, it doesn’t matter if they pretend not to or if they’re open about it, I still have an assful of dick
I didn’t say RN would do better. I said they would be the same.
ehmmm… so did I
but it seemed you portrait that as a better option for some reason
Dismantle independent media: Also check
I wouldn’t be so pessimistic, the erosion of democracy is usually a relatively slow process. Poland went 8 years under its equivalent to NF and still managed to win its democracy back.
The erosion has started a long while ago (~15years ?), together with the erosion of independent media and sabotage of education. What we see today might very well be a breaking point.
Macron just dissolved the national assembly. There’s no reason to believe the new assembly won’t exactly represent the same percentages we have just witnessed. Our country is fucked.
It feels like this is gonna be his David Cameron moment
I hope the French know how hard it is to get rid of the right wing once you vote them in. When Sunak called an election in the UK within the first week we had relaxed voting requirements for expats (a typically right wing voting group) and anonymous complaints against MPs of the opposing party that simply prevent them from standing because the complaints investigation procedure is longer than the very short election window.
We’re already led by the right wing though.
Liberals have been fucking our country for decades.
Yeah, the left doesn’t want to make amends and unify. My bet is macron needed an ego boost or something, the socialists and the centrists will unify, so even if they win we get basically the same government. And even then it will be more to the right than it previously was.
Best case scenario the left union (LFI EELV PCF etc…) goes second turn against the centrists and socialists. That’s assuming we get more leftists and as much centrists as in 2022.
Worst case scenario the RN and centrists go second turn. This would assume the votes for everyone stay the same, which isn’t true the LFI has gotten more popular but still it’s likely this will happen.
France has been led by liberals for years now, enshittified without mercy by these rich fucks, these EU sellouts. Our education is fucked, out healthcare is fucked, our lifestyle is fucked, all to please these rich cunts. it’s time we bring out the guillotine again.
Fuck the EU, fuck macron, fuck these pretend left wing cucks from LFI and PS, fuck the nazi cunts.
Only one solution, revolution. Heads need to roll again to remind them who’s in charge.
I agree with you this is the result of decades of liberal policies and the left was never been able to stand against it in any capacity. It’s a really shame, but we had it coming for a long long time.
Although the EU is far from perfect, I still think it brings more good than evil. We should try to salvage what is good.
I am not so much on board for cutting heads, but think these corrupt motherfuckers should rot in prison for life.
The EU can get fucked too. They forced the fishermen who received subsidies because of the crazy oil prices that forced them to stay in port to return the money. They forced the
nationalisationprivatization of our energy production, of our railways, etc. Things that shouldn’t be operated around profit margins are now forced to pay dividends to greedy cunts wo provide nothing of value to our society.A significant portion of our problems today is due to the loss of economic freedom and the forced capitalist march led by the eurocrats.
Burn everything down, make heads roll.
They forced the nationalisation of our energy production, of our railways, etc.
I think you mean privatized energy and railways.
I agree, this was a complete shit show, especially in France.
Although, it’s not the EU constitution and political systems that is fully at fault, but the people we elected to take the seats in the parliament. This time around we get fucked even harder, with a huge set back for Greens and Left in general, and big rise of hard-right and liberals.
Without the EU, how can our small individual European countries hold against massive Americans corporations and other giants like China or Russia? Neo-liberal policies would still dominate in our countries but all of or industry and agriculture and media would be enslaved to bigger entities of the “free market”.
Today, the EU still helps us to stand against erosion of our privacy and mass surveillance (although there are big red flags on this point at the moment), push for better standards on technologies (universal charging, GDPR). Also, freedom of movement, unified currency. You know you can move to another EU country, find a job there, no need for any special work permit or visa, and then you can also vote for municipal elections there too ?
We have a lot to loose along side the EU. I guess that makes me a reformist more than a revolutionary.
This is a well balanced response
Yes sorry, I meant privatization, brain fart moment.
I don’t think universal charging or gdpr are meaningful in my everyday life. Do you want to know how I dealt with Apple’s bullshit premium prices on their slightly different shaped plug?
I didn’t buy Apple products. And even with universal charging, I still won’t. I literally do not care about this universal charging thing. USB has been a de facto standard in my life long before the EU decided to randomly care about it.
The only effect of gdpr is having to click on a trillion check marks every time you visit a website if you care about your privacy, or just give up and click the ‘accept all’ button, and even if you turn them all off, there’s still a trillion trackers because of ‘necessary’ ones.
These two ‘achievements’ are the most meaningless things ever.
The thing that actually impacts my life, for example, is the EU’s constant fight against biodiversity, by preventing the sales of any seed that isn’t pre-approved in a list designed by some corrupt official paid by Monsanto and friends.
The EU can get fucked.
The only effect of gdpr is having to click on a trillion check marks
This is only the visible part of the iceberg for regular users and I agree it sucks. But most importantly GDPR take companies accountable for personal data management and data-breaches. They are mandated by law to disclose publicly when they have suffered a data-breach, which was not the case anywhere before, and still isn’t the case in the US. It also mandates the data of EU-citizens must be managed and stored in the EU, and cannot be saved more than 1 year without renewed consent. GDPR is a very meaningful progress.
For all the agriculture and environment topics, I agree with you that it is a debacle.
And I’m sure all of these things are heavily enforced and companies face hefty fines when they don’t follow these regulations lmao
This is the most French comment I read today
How did they enshittify your country specifically? I want to compare it with how neoliberalism enshittified the UK.
Budget cuts left, right and center mostly.
Education, healthcare, transportation, everything goes down the shitter in the name of tax cuts and profits for the mega rich.
Medicine is more expensive than ever and many drugs get removed from the reimbursement list every year.
Increased retirement age even though numbers and stats show there is no need to.
Just the average liberalism bullshit similar to every other country.
I am apologising for what Gražulis does in advance.
Už ka balsavai?
Už Laisvės Partiją :/
